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Thanks for the response and advice chippie. It's been a day and a half in the pasture and I haven't given the calf an ounce of milk from a bottle and she still seems content and healthy. Obviously, I'm beyond thrilled that things seem to have fixed themselves.

Thanks for the responses. The little one seems to be hanging in there and is spending some time up feeding or following mom but plenty of time chilling too so I think she seems fine. For the time being, I'm going to follow hillsdown's advice.

OK, minor tragedy here. I left for vacation and ended up having one 3 month old calf get out and get hit by a car, which was the first type incident I've ever had with my cattle and on the same day, I had a two day old calf turn up missing. He was eventually found the next day and was...

All very informative, thanks everyone.

Knersie, I truly appreciate the advice but you're speaking Latin to me. I just don't remember my physiology and genetics from college (I wasn't an ag major) to remember homozygous/heterozygous, etc.. We got the Hereford on a trade for one of our young Highland bulls but I know she was bred...

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I was really concerned about this heifer because it was her first go around but so far she's doing OK. When the calves were born, her udder wasn't very big at all but now, two days later, she's filled up pretty well and both seem to be getting a belly full...

Polled horns in cattle is a dominant trait, isn't it? I have a naturally polled Hereford heifer that just had twin calves that are out of one of our purebred Highlan bulls and I'm curious whether the young bulls will be polled or not. I'm guessing that they will be but would appreciate if...

Thanks for the insight Jim. My gut tells me that most animals, even the larger ruminants, commonly have multiple births but I thought I had read somewhere that it was more unusual than in humans. Of course I don't know what the incidence is in humans either. :lol: I'm just happy that she...

OK, just a couple of questions about my new twins. I have a first calf Hereford heifer that I've been watching for a week or so, waiting for her first calf. She was bred to a purebred Highland bull and now I'm glad that she was as she dropped twin calves last night. She seemed to be having...

No offense taken. To answer some questions, they're on grass all spring, summer and fall. These two were just moved into the pasture that they're presently in a day or two ago and the pasture that they came from still has plenty of lush green grass (the rest of my herd had taken care of most...

Thought I'd post pictures of two animals that will be going to the butcher this week or next. The last time I had animals butchered, I posted pics and got beat up a little bit on the board. :lol: Thought I'd post the pictures of these guys and see how I did. The first pic is a Limo cross...

I appreciate everyone's input. For what it's worth, I've been on vacation for the last week and haven't been able to visit the board. One point of clarification, I bought those two steers last year as feeders because I was only going to have one of my own animals to finish/slaughter/sell this...

Thanks for the info, it's been rather helpful.

That's an interesting article farmwriter. I can clearly see the difference between your steer and mine, quite a bit more muscle, particularly in the backside, on yours. I guess what I'm still unclear about is how much of that is attributable to grain finishing and how much is simple genetics...

RA Bill, I'm not sure if you were asking me but, no, I never said that I'm averaging 45-55% hanging weight. I've only done 4 animals so far but last year's animals seemed to finish much higher than I would have expected. As I said before, I didn't have live weights but got nearly 70% of their...

OK, thanks Aero, that's the sort of thing that I was hoping to hear. It will be interesting to actually see the hanging carcass and then the finished cuts so that it all starts to fit together. I fed them ground corn for about 90 days but probably only finished at about 15 pounds per animal...

Thanks Bill, I had a pretty good idea about butchering losses based on last year's animals that went into the freezer. They were both Highland steers/bulls and both finished (boneless cut and wrapped weight) at nearly 70% of hanging weight which I was very happy with. I had no way of knowing...

I'm a newbie trying to educate myself and would like some opinions about a few things. I've owned a few beefers (mostly Scottish Highland but some other stuff mixed in as well. I'm trying out several things and refining my likes and opinions regarding breeds) for two years now and would like...

Thanks you all very, very much. The calf is back!!! We searched diligently for hours and, even in the dark, I was out there every 30 minutes or so. I was still amazed that the cow didn't seem terribly concerned but it was going on 5 hours since anyone had seen the little bugger. Well, lo and...

Thanks for the encouragement and I'm hopeful that it's something like this. The mother doesn't seem too distressed, though she's off by herself instead of hanging with the rest of the group. I've lost youngsters before but always in the summertime when the pasture was up. I'm hopeful that the...